


Slow Motion Sickness

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-16
Updated: 2010-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-09 12:25:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/87432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And the others, the ones who weren't going mad, they were the ones who made the hard choices as everything fell apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow Motion Sickness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tristesses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tristesses/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Divinity Defined By Echo](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/812) by tristesses. 



Watching McCoy's slow motion deterioration was the hardest; harder than the blanket of ignorance that had been dropped over the rest of the crew about the nature of their situation, the status of the away team, and especially how to save themselves. By the time Scotty called them to his cramped workroom on the Engineering deck, neither Sulu nor Chekov were surprised that the request for their visit had come. They, and no one else.

"McCoy's not himself," Scotty began without the formality of a greeting when the door sealed shut behind Sulu. There was something in the private, encoded message he'd sent to their personal padds that communicated that this was not a meeting of junior officers with their superior officer, nor a social call. This, they both knew, was a meeting of the minds to solve their compounding problems.

"The gravitational pull of the planet is holding us in place," Sulu reported, his shoulders down. "It's not pulling us closer and the last attempt to break out..."

"Aye, I saw how that went," Scotty agreed grimly and finally looked over to them. "It's McCoy I'm worried about right now. Saw him drinking again in sickbay rambling about that planet when I went to get that burn healed."

"You think he's insane?" Chekov interrupted, then looked like he regretted the choice of words, but neither Scotty nor Sulu could really dispute them.

Scotty set down a wrench, one he'd only been turning in nervous energy, and his mouth hardened into a firm line. "I'm not command material, but the two of you are, and I'll be acting as first officer as long as Mr. Spock is missing."

"You want to declare him unfit for duty," Sulu supplied evenly, and only Chekov's face reflected any surprise at the words.

"We've lost all contact with Command. I need the two of you to make the decision with me. As far as I can tell, we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. The ship is pretty obviously in danger, McCoy's incapable of making a sound command decision, but we're up a creek without him, if you catch my drift." Scotty's expression was serious, but he forced himself to remain objective, focused and unafraid of the unspoken, unknown element they all needed to think of.

Sulu sat down first, and Chekov next to him, staring at his hands with his mouth pressed together in a thin, unhappy line.

"I know it's not popular, Chekov, but what else can we do? Bad enough the captain didn't anticipate this and order someone else in command, or let the natural command structure fall into place. The man's talking in riddles and muttering to himself and the rest of the ship..." Scotty trailed off and looked back to his workbench. They knew what he meant.

Things had seemed normal when they arrived to this planet, no different than any of their other missions. Initial scans had been unremarkable, and even the very beginning of the away mission had first seemed well. Then the panic set into the away team and even the crew left on the ship could feel the tension in knowing something was happening. _Something_ was happening, and they had no way to know what it was, let alone how to solve their problems. The captain was gone, the first officer with him, an engineering ensign dead, or two. They had all read what few and scattered reports were available to them, filled with useless information. McCoy was the only one left on the ship who had been on the planet, who had any idea of what it was really like. Chekov had been taking the transmissions from the planet to his personal console and only stopped when Sulu stopped by his quarters when one had come and he saw that Chekov was shaking under his bravado with every shriek.

"So we take the ship," Chekov finally concluded, looking up from his hands and flicking his eyes between Scotty, and then Sulu.

"McCoy will recover, and then he can help us. We need to get away," Sulu interjected, still ostensibly cool and level-headed, though Chekov knew from knowing him so well that beneath his facade, he was frantic. He'd seen it at the console when he realized for the fourth time that the ship couldn't break away from orbit. Scotty had been down below, in Engineering, and Sulu at the conn when he wasn't trying to fly whatever evasive maneuvers might have saved them. None worked. Sulu steadily retreated deeper behind the cold facade, anything to keep the maddening panic, different from McCoy's mania and the terror of the away team on the planet, far away.

"What about the captain?" Chekov's hands clenched and unclenched, his mind firing off rapid, practical responses; things they needed to consider in doing this. The captain was their greatest problem to be addressed, more than the looming display of the planet on their monitors, and the inevitable time where they they would have to consider things for themselves, for their own survival above his and the away team's.

There was a long moment of silence, none of them willing to verbalize the proposition until Scotty cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I'll take McCoy's place as captain, as the senior officer on board. We'll move the ship to another planet in the system to make repairs and reestablish contact with Command. If McCoy's not himself, they can tell us what to do then about the others."

"Then what do you need the two of us here for?" Again, Chekov. His fingers tapped his thigh nervously. His position as one of trust among the crew was still alien to him, as though it should have belonged to someone else, someone whose rank was remarkable, their achievements better than his. Their failures less apparent. Sulu squeezed his shoulder when he stood up.

"The captain trusts the both of you. I trust you," Scotty told him, and looked as though he hoped it wasn't too desperate. "I cannot do this alone."

He meant that he could not go through with what felt like betrayal and mutiny, not without being flanked by others in support, no matter how necessary. Kirk would have wanted it this way, but enacting the plan—that was the difficult part. Chekov looked away and Sulu nodded firmly, forcing steel into his will to do this.

"The others will be okay," he told them, but his voice was weak and he was distracted already, feeling the ship's natural movements for anything out of place. "Are you going to the bridge, Scotty?"

"Afraid not," came the answer, "too much to do here. Blowing the right nacelle was the last thing we needed with the last try, and I don't care how well it worked with Nero, I'm not igniting the warp core close to the planet."

"Not with the captain and the others there," Chekov supplied, and looked pale.

"Then we're doing this?" Sulu looked between the other two and hardened his expression until there was no trace of emotion, nothing that could leak through and weaken him.

"Have we got a choice? Yes, we're doing it." Scotty steeled himself, and Chekov, and they all three stood as conspirators together. Sulu clenched his fists tightly.

"From here on, then, McCoy is no longer captain," he acknowledged with a grimace.

Chekov swore under his breath in Russian, but the others didn't move. Then Chekov squared his shoulders, saluted, and started toward the door.

"I will prepare the crew for your announcement, Captain," he announced quietly, Sulu following after as time whipped around them, passing faster than they could stop, whispering that their plans were already for naught. For their desperate planning, something was always a step ahead of them, beyond their control. Something was happening, something more than before; something electric and warning in the air, though there was nothing to indicate what, or when it would happen, or if they would have time enough for their mutiny to make a difference.

When they reached the turbolift, Sulu reached for his arm and Chekov didn't shake it off.

"I know this isn't really what either of us had planned for our careers," he told him quietly, even as Chekov punched in his access code to take them up to the bridge. "It seems... wrong to be doing this."

"It _is_ wrong," Chekov told him, and Sulu could see the wrinkle in his forehead. "Like we've been dragged into some kind of parallel universe where we're supposed to seize power—and only to stay alive!" He shook his head and waved a hand dismissively. "It's wrong this way, but I see no other choice and you do not, and Mr. Scott does not—not that we see much of anything that's going on right now, either."

Sulu released him, pressed the stop for the turbolift, and rested his forehead against the back of his hand. "I don't know that anyone does."

"Except McCoy."  
"Not even McCoy."

Chekov swore again, and his hand hovered over the release on the lift stop. "I calculated everything, Sulu. I checked the maps, hand-calculated the telemetry when the computer gave me an error—_five thousand percent_ error, Sulu."

Sulu looked up from his hand and stared back at Chekov, barely masking the alarmed horror in his eyes. "We're lost."

"At least as lost as the away team. If my calculations are remotely correct, we should be as far as the Delta Quadrant by now." Chekov moved his hand away from the release when Sulu grabbed his shoulder.

"Then why did you agree to go along with this? You could have told Scotty that and he'd have understood. Jesus _Christ_, Pavel, no one's _been_ to the Delta Quadrant."

This time, Chekov shrugged off his arm and pushed in the release.

"Because if anyone can perform a miracle that defies physics and all that the universe knows, it's the crew of this ship. You and Mr. Scott," he told him in bitter faith as the lift shuddered back to life, and the doors opened to the bridge.

Sulu recovered and they shared a knowing look, saying nothing more but always on the same wavelength, then stepped in tandem onto the bridge.


End file.
